Libraries Announce New Organizational Structure

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The Harvard Library Board, composed of faculty and
administrators from across the University, has approved a new organizational
structure for the Harvard Library and laid out a timeline for transition to the
new arrangement, Provost Alan M. Garber announced September 28 in a letter
to the Harvard community.

Under the new structure, each individual library within the
Harvard Library system will join one of five affinity groups based on criteria
such as collection needs, content or service commonalities, or specialized
activities. The five groups comprise

libraries focused on application of theory
in practice, including those of the schools of law, business, education, and
government;

a group focused on physical and life sciences with shared research
responsibilities, including the medical school library and the science
libraries;

a group formed around content areas, such as the humanities and the
social sciences, including major collections such as those of Widener and
Lamont;

libraries of arts and culture such as fine arts, architecture, music, theater, and film;

and finally, a group of special collections libraries such as Houghton and the
University Archives.

In many cases, libraries within these groups were already
working closely together, said Helen
Shenton, executive director of the library, in an interview. The groups are
designed to facilitate collaboration, she emphasized. “They are not intended to
be new silos in any way. We want to enable and encourage collaboration across
the groups.”

The directors of individual
libraries will continue to report to deans within their own schools, but each will
also report to the head of an affinity group, who will report in turn to the
executive director of the library. Group heads, Garber wrote in his letter,
“will be charged with advancing the strategic goals of the Harvard Library.”

For
example, Shenton said, “We know that we need an integrated collection-development strategy.” The new structure, she explained, balances the desire “to respect and
cherish and nourish the individuality of the libraries” with the
“need to work toward shared services,” for which new heads have been hired
recently in the areas of information and technical services, preservation and
digital imaging services, and access services. A new chief financial officer
will also report to Shenton. (See the Harvard Library’s new
organizational design). These changes also lay the groundwork for more collaboration with outside library systems, which will necessarily have implications for collection-development strategy.

Individual libraries will, during the next 45 days, have the
opportunity to change affinity groups. During this same period, a nomination
process will be developed for the appointment of the affinity-group heads, who
will be chosen from among professional librarians already working within the
Harvard Library system. “Furthermore,” Garber wrote, “we plan to review the
affinity-group assignments after 18 months, giving the Schools and individual
libraries an opportunity to modify the group structure as we gain experience
with the organization.” The transition will be completed sometime in 2013.